


Motifs Of Rebellion

by chicafrom3



Category: Andromeda (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Punk Band, Families of Choice, Gen, Yuletide Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-20
Updated: 2014-12-20
Packaged: 2018-03-02 12:29:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2812031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chicafrom3/pseuds/chicafrom3
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The second question everyone asks is always "How the hell did you people end up in a band together?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Motifs Of Rebellion

**Author's Note:**

  * For [colls](https://archiveofourown.org/users/colls/gifts).



> You said 'all sorts of AUs' and 'found families' and 'I adore the relationship between Beka and Harper' and 'life on the Maru' and this got stuck in my head and wouldn't leave until I wrote it down. It's not really that last one unless you squint a bit, but I hope you like it anyway. Happy Yuletide!

The first question everyone asks is always "Where did the name 'Eureka Maru' come from?"

The second question everyone asks is always "How the hell did you people end up in a band together?"

It's a fair question.

* * *

It's Beka's band. That's the one thing that is never under debate. She started it, she's the lead singer and guitarist, she owns the van and most of the equipment, she recruited the rest of them. They can argue about tour dates and put in their votes for the set list but when it comes down to it, Beka makes the decisions and the rest of them listen.

Hardcore fans know there were a few different bands playing under the name Eureka Maru before the current lineup got together, with Beka as the only constant. Bootleg tapes get passed around sometimes; for a while the most in-demand tape is a low-quality audience recording with Bobby Jensen singing lead from his short-lived term as the band's bassist/vocalist, but that changes once enough copies are in circulation for everyone to realize that he was kind of a shitty singer.

(Ever since Harper joined the band, the quality of the bootlegs has gone up. Beka doesn't ask him any direct questions about that, but she does make sure she gets a cut of his profits.)

Everyone knows Beka's backstory. She grew up in a rock band, the daughter of the almost-famous guitarist Ignatius Valentine — they say he could've been the next Jimi Hendrix if he hadn't burned out and died young. She could play guitar before she could ride a bike. At seventeen, after her dad died, she sold everything except his guitar and his van, and started her own punk band.

The parts that not 'everyone' knows includes the fact that she was the only person who went to her dad's funeral; that growing up in a rock band meant, in practice, eating granola bars and leftover takeout with her brother while their dad went out to score drugs or groupies or both; that she hasn't seen said brother since she was fourteen, three years before their dad died, and she hasn't seen her mother (one of those groupies Ignatius scored, once upon a time) since she was two, and she hasn't seen her dad's best friend Sid, the lead singer of Ignatius's band, since she was thirteen.

Beka doesn't like dwelling on the past.

The Eureka Maru is her band, and she's doing everything with it her dad used to dream about doing with his.

(The first time the Eureka Maru played for an audience, they were opening for a band called Bad Future, and the lineup was Beka and three guys whose names she can't recall anymore, although she thinks one went by the nickname Stab. Ten years later, Bad Future opens for Eureka Maru with a lineup consisting of Beka, Harper, Rev, and Trance, and she is fiercely proud of everything they've done with the little they had.)

* * *

When Harper joined the band, it was just him and Beka.

To be fair, before Harper joined the band, it was just Beka and Bobby; they kept hiring and firing other musicians, because nobody seemed to quite fit in. Later, Beka would wonder why that was: if it was just because she was so wrapped up in Bobby Jensen that she didn't _want_ to let anyone else in, or if she'd just had a run of bad luck with hiring idiots and divas, or if Bobby had somehow been subtly sabotaging the musicians she hired, to try to make her more dependent on him.

Then came the little street rat who snuck into the van to fall asleep among the speakers, and the realization that Bobby was skimming profits from their shows, selling drugs at gigs when she was otherwise occupied, and basically just a complete lying fuckhead, and voila: it went from Beka-and-Bobby to Beka-and-Harper in no time at all.

(It wasn't quite that simple. There were punches thrown and accusations shouted, Bobby tried to steal the van, the main reason Beka even considered upgrading her unexpected stowaway from "kid I will throw out in front of the next pay phone" to "wanna join my band" was because he put his neck on the line to help her get rid of Bobby without losing her van, her equipment, or her pride. But she likes the short version of the story better.)

What most of their audience knows about Harper is that he's from Boston, he's the reason Beka can buy second- or even third-hand sound equipment because he will upgrade and improve and tinker with it until it's better than brand new, and he didn't know how to play a single note until Beka taught him. If the most hardcore of the hardcore fans are included in that, they may also know that he's responsible for several if not most of the bootlegs in circulation, that when Beka took him in he had nowhere else to go, and that he and a friend once got thrown out of a music festival for accidentally blowing up a sound board.

What almost no one knows is just how long Harper's had nowhere to go. Even Beka doesn't know the full extent of it, since Harper seems allergic to talking about his past, but she knows that he spent a long time homeless; she knows he doesn't have any family left, save maybe a cousin back in Boston who might be dead; she knows, from things he's said and things he hasn't said, that the homelessness started before he didn't have any family left. She knows that he doesn't have much if any formal education, and that he's worked for gangs in the past, and that the yin-yang tattoo on his arm was illegally obtained in order to cover up a different illegally-obtained tattoo, though she doesn't know what the original tattoo was of.

She knows that he's a quick learner. He picked up guitar faster than anyone else she knows, though he's still not as good at it as she is. These days he mostly plays the drums; he likes being in the background, the support instead of the star. She thinks he'd probably prefer to be their sound engineer and step out of the spotlight entirely but, well, she needs him onstage.

It's weird how that filthy kid sleeping under her speakers has become her one rock in an uncaring universe.

It's weird, but she wouldn't trade Harper for anything.

* * *

Rev was the Eureka Maru's bass guitarist on-and-off for years before he took Beka aside after a gig and asked if she would consider giving him a permanent place in the van. She offered him a bunk immediately.

"Rev" Bem is one of the best-known bassists in the business. Everyone knows his story; after an adolescence spent running wild with gangs, he turned his life around after a knife fight left him permanently scarred and a hospital chaplain helped him find a calling in both religion and music. He alternated playing for jazz bands and studying theology for years.

And then he found punk.

Or maybe punk found him.

Beka always figured if he was going to sign permanently with a band, it'd be one of the Christian punk bands that have started popping up, or a jazz fusion group. Not the Eureka Maru, with its weird mix of hardcore, street, and noise.

But he says he feels called to them, and who is she to disagree? He's not just a great bassist, he's a good friend, and a dependable, trustworthy bandmate. Not to mention a killer negotiator.

Rev and Harper don't always get along. Harper's got an anti-authoritarian streak a mile wide that extends to religious people, and Rev's more than a little interested in 'saving' Harper's probably-irredeemably-damaged soul. At first Beka hoped that maybe they'd bond over their gang-related pasts and regrets thereof, but that doesn't happen.

Instead they bond over their mutual hatred of the growing Nazi punk movement.

The arguments on the bus get less angry and more affectionate, and Harper starts reading Rev's books so that he can dismiss Rev's points more efficiently, and Rev starts sneaking educational texts in among his religious and philosophical books to help Harper make up for the education he missed out on.

They start to feel like a band instead of a collection of people who sometimes play together.

Beka likes it.

* * *

Trance is the most recent addition to the Eureka Maru.

She turned up a couple months after Vex died in a tragic but completely preventable accident involving collapsing risers; the worst part is that it was Vex himself who was responsible for checking those risers to make sure they were set up safely, so the only person Beka can blame is the same person she's grieving.

Vex wasn't a great friend, he wasn't someone she foresaw staying with the band for years and years, and true to his nickname he annoyed almost everyone; he was a good rhythm guitarist but not a great one, and he didn't really get along with Harper, and he had a pyro streak that was worrying.

But he was a friend, and what he lacked in musical skill he made up for in onstage charisma, and he was a member of Beka's band when he died.

And she missed him.

Trance wasn't someone Beka foresaw staying with the band for long, either. She was too young and too sweet and too wide-eyed innocence, and with her long skirts and flowers in her hair and beaming smiles, she seems more suited for a folk group somewhere than a punk band.

She's a good rhythm guitarist, though, even if she admitted once that she really preferred keyboards, which made Harper's eyes light up with plans to expand into synth and Beka cringe with the knowledge of how much a good synthesizer keyboard would cost.

Trance fits into the band better than Beka expected her to.

She's all sparkles and sunshine, which should be irritating but instead is endearing. On stage, she bounces around with her guitar, teasing the rest of them into putting all of their energy into the gig; off stage, she gets into harmless mischief with Harper, earnestly talks philosophy with Rev, and coaxes Beka into giving her guitar lessons.

It's not long until Beka's pretty sure Trance is around for good.

It's not long after that when Beka realizes that she knows even less about Trance than she knows about the rest of her close-mouthed little band, but Trance is a genius at dodging questions about her past. Trance Gemini is a stage name, but Beka probably wouldn't be able to pronounce her real name, so there's no reason for her to know it. Where did she grow up? Oh, this little place, Beka probably never heard of it. How did she get into punk? Well, how does anyone get into punk, Beka?

Eventually, Beka stops asking.

With Trance on the lineup, the band feels honestly complete, for the first time.

* * *

Life in the van isn't particularly easy. They're usually short on cash and always short on space. Harper generally has a maintenance or upgrade project going on that takes up half the floor space. Trance has — somehow — started growing an herb and flower garden using the little bit of sunlight that struggles in through the grimy windows. Beka's ever-expanding collection of guitars is beginning to edge everything else out.

Rev's space is always pin-neat, but that doesn't help very much.

Beka's used to making her own space wherever she can find it, and Harper can sleep anywhere at anytime and be up again at a moment's notice, but Rev and Trance both need a little more predictability so usually the two of them get the decent bunks and Beka and Harper share the one that isn't technically broken or else find their own sleeping arrangements.

There's an ongoing ban on Harper sleeping on the floor, though. It's been in place ever since Trance got up in the middle of the night, stepped on his hand, and shrieked loudly enough to wake up everyone else.

Beka talks sometimes about getting a bigger van, maybe even a bus, once they make it to the big time, but the truth is she loves her dad's broken-down old van, and as long as it keeps getting them places she can't imagine ever giving it up.

Anyway, Harper keeps the van in shape, just like he keeps their sound equipment and tour gear in shape. He's a boy of many talents.

Sometimes Beka is pretty sure that her band is meant to be doing other things with their lives — that Harper should be revolutionizing science somewhere with a thousand patents to his name, and Rev should be bringing jazz and God to the downtrodden, and Trance should be growing a rose garden and teaching five-year-olds the alphabet or something, Trance is hard to figure out — but instead they're all here with her in her crappy van playing punk music in rathole clubs.

Sometimes Beka really does love her life.

* * *

Their first big hit is called 'Slipstream'. Beka writes it. Harper puts his own spin on the music. It's angry and pounding and she screams herself hoarse at every performance and people love it. They start selling out shows — not every show, but enough. People actually buy the album.

Beka doesn't know how long this is going to last, but she intends to ride it out.

After one show, she takes a bottle of water and some lozenges and goes for a walk. Harper catches up with her a couple streets away from the club, asks if she wants to be left alone; she wraps an arm around his neck and they walk a few blocks in silence.

Finally she says, "I wish my dad could see this."

Harper nods like he understands. Maybe he does. Maybe he's thinking about his own long-gone family.

Beka says, "I'm really glad you're here."

He leans his head against her and says, "I wouldn't want to be anywhere else, Boss."

* * *

Everybody writes songs at one point or another.

Everybody's got their own style.

Harper's lyrics are unabashedly street punk, the music loud and clashing and pounding and prone to inducing headaches. Rev doesn't proselytize as much in his lyrics as Harper always claims he does, but all his songs have a philosophical bent, something thoughtful and Zen and reassuring. Trance's songs are upbeat and cheerful and sweet and full of hope for the future and they mostly don't record them.

Beka experiments, mixing genres and writing about whatever she feels like writing about — the music scene, politics, her dad, ex-boyfriends, ex-friends, inequality. Some of the stuff she writes she doesn't share with the others. Most of it she does.

Everyone always says one of the best things about the Eureka Maru is that you never know what to expect from a new album.

Beka thinks one of the best things about the Eureka Maru is that you can always hear all four of them in their music. People sometimes try to dismiss them as Beka Valentine and her backing team, but the truth is they're a band in the truest sense; it wouldn't be complete without all of them.


End file.
